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“Contemporary feminist debates over the meanings of gender lead time and again to a certain sense of trouble, as if the indeterminacy of gender might eventually culminate in the failure of feminism. Perhaps trouble need not carry such a negative valence.”
(Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, 1990)
Gender Studies are a field of research that has developed out of Women's Studies, Feminist Studies, and Gay and Lesbian Studies in the 1990s. One of its key aims, simply put, is to show why and how gender matters in our day-to-day existence and why gender is often considered to cause trouble. Taking our cue from Butler’s quote above, we will discuss how this trouble can also be productive and positive. This course will provide a historical overview of how our perceptions of sex and gender have changed over centuries, and how they have shaped our constructions of identity. We are going to discuss selected seminal texts of gender studies and its related disciplines, and combine these theoretical approaches with practical examples taken from our every-day lives and from literature and culture. We are going to pay particular attention to the issue of intersectionality, i.e. how gender interacts with other identity categories such as sexuality, race, class, or ability.
Texts:
A course reader will be made available to you on Moodle at the beginning of the semester. You are expected to prepare a reading/viewing for each session. |
